Wency Ho Wan Sze, doctor, Hong Kong
About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation; Substitution
The Haunting of Borley Rectory
2 days ago
Enthusiastic reflections about names, the universe and everything, with a positive dose of critical thinking
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes."
China soccer’s Yeung generation could be EPL bound
Agence France-Presse in Birmingham
Apr 16, 2010
Carson Yeung, the owner of Birmingham City, hopes a reality television programme will unearth players in China who could one day play in the English Premier League (EPL).
Numerous sports dream of ‘cracking’ China and making the most of the potential opprtunities afforded by making an impact in the world’s most populous nation.
Hong Kong businessman Yeung, explaining his plans, told FC Business and The Independent: “We’ll send coaches from England, and the top boys who are selected will have a promotional attachment with our training school.
“We are working out the details now and the programme is imminent.
“That will give us exposure on TV on a weekly basis, starting in Hong Kong, then hopefully in China.”
But Yeung stressed City manager Alex McLeish, who has guided the club to an impressive ninth place in the table following last season’s promotion, would continue to have a free hand in selection and that no player would be imposed upon him purely for commercial reasons.
“Let me be clear that this is not something that we are doing in isolation,” Yeung said.
“Alex McLeish is on top of the situation and aware of what we want to do. And there is no notion that we would ever tell Alex McLeish how to do his job or who to play.
“McLeish is excellent. We couldn’t ask for anyone better,” Yeung added. “We’re not suggesting we’re going to impose a [Chinese] striker and remove James McFadden. That would be ridiculous.
“But McLeish understands there is a commercial connotation if we can find a promising Chinese player.
“And he’s excited that if we can unearth potential, and under his hand a player could be groomed to become English football’s [answer to Chinese NBA basketball star] Yao Ming, that can be positive for the club.”
Yeung’s comments came as investment bank Seymour Pierce threatened to wrest control of Birmingham over what it said was an unpaid debt of 2.2 million pounds (HK$26 million) they claim they are owed for advising the City owner in his takeover of the club, completed in November.
“I think the players only read about themselves and do not start looking at the business section of newspapers.” “I don’t think they are going to rush out and buy the Financial Times.”
Cole was guest of honour at yesterday's draw for the [Soccer Sevens] tournament, which will feature 16 teams each in the main competition and the masters. He said he had little time to look around the city, which he last visited with United in a pre-season tour in 1999, when they beat South China 2-0. Cole scored the second goal after Terry Sheringham had opened the scoring.
The central mystery of Easter is that Jesus Christ — God who became a human — suffered and died for humanity and raised himself from the dead to restore the friendship between God and mankind. Most of the world thinks this is a fairy story.
The Chinese society is not a religious society but a superstitious one. Of course there are Christians and Falun Gong and others in China, but generally speaking and traditionally, it’s not a religious society. As I say, it does have superstitions. But the major dominating influences in Chinese thought have been philosophies as opposed to religions. So Buddhism in its original form (of course it secretes a lot of superstitious elements), but in its original form it has no deity or deities, it has no supernatural elements. And Confucianism is also a philosophy, and so the educated people throughout the Chinese tradition have been brought up in one or the other of those philosophies. And because they have not been exposed to what we would regard as traditional characteristic religious beliefs, they just don’t have them. This is a very good example of how education makes a difference in these respects
What explains what’s happening in China is allied rather closely to what’s happening elsewhere in the world, not in growth of numbers elsewhere in the world, but an increase in volume in the degree to which people are prepared to avow their faith or take a stand now that we’ve got this division opening up between the religious and the non-religious. And that is, when something, anything, is under pressure, any ideology is under pressure (as the Chinese communist ideology is) it opens a gap into which people fall if they don’t have something else to clutch on to. And people do have a propensity to look for the ready-made, the ready-to-hand set of answers, which is one reason for example of why people recur to religious belief.
Devil. Whale. Chlorophyll, Violante, Treacle — you name it, Hong Kong probably has someone who goes by it. Inquisitive, enterprising and...